If you’ve never used my ruler before, there are videos to help you under the videos tab at the top of the blog. You can watch again and again.

Place a blue 2 1/2’’ strip and a neutral 2 1/2’’ strip with right sides together. Square off one end as shown.

Making the first cut.

Move the clean cut edge you just trimmed to the far left. The ruler is marked in “FINISHED UNIT SIZE.” Place the 2’’ finished red line at the top of the strip set, ON the fabric, not above the fabric on the mat. The green triangle will be pointed at you. Make the first cut as shown.

Pivot the ruler so the green triangle is up.

Make second cut.

Cutting down the strip set.

To build your variety, work from short strip sets without too many repeats of the same thing. Cut 252 matched pairs ready to sew.

Place either the Simple Folded Corners Mini with the edge of the ruler at the edge of the square, or the full sized Simple Folded Corners ruler with the 3 1/2’’ line at the side of the fabric squares. Cut off upper corner. Save corner.

Cut 2’’ strips all the way up the pair of squares.

(You can do it sideways too!)

You will end up with at least one corner that is a bit too small – that’s okay!

Sew the pairs of bias strips along BOTH long sides of each strip set.

They will be a tube!

Cutting HST’s from the tubes!

Place the 2’’ finished line along the seam line on the tube. Make a cut, and then pivot the ruler to make a cut from the upper edge. I find that I need to leave room for “the turn of the cloth” so the 2’’ line is just ABOVE the seam line for me, into the triangle, not into the seam allowance. It allows the fabric to turn up and over the thread for greater accuracy.

Cutting with the Mini is the same!

Place the 2’’ line just into the triangle above the seam. The line should touch the top of the seam.

Opening the triangles.

There will be a few stitches into the upper tip of each triangle pair. These easily lift apart, no seam ripper needed.

Perfection! Now remove those dog ears.

I love that I can use the increments to measure and cut strips, squares & rectangles as well as triangles!

If you are a compulsive sliver trimmer – and I know there are some lurking amongst us, and you want to use the Essential Triangle Tool method, but you MUST trim everything to be happy, try this!

Place the 2’’ finished line just above the seam line (can you see it in the photo?!) and trim two sides and then press. Only a hair had to come off of this one. I love how the Essential Triangle tooland the Simple Folded Corners rulers work hand in hand with each other.

Let’s recap:

You are making 252 blue & neutral half-square triangle units. Units will measure 2 1/2’’ and finish at 2’’ in the quilt. Press seams toward the blue fabric. REMOVE ALL DOG EARS!!

We will continue with our second Link-Up being posted on MONDAY. Something ELSE to look forward to come Monday:

This happened yesterday!

This is what a load of 4,000 copies of String Frenzy looks like! We pulled into the Yellow Freight Depot with the trailer, were loaded by forklift and brought them all home. I’m starting to dig into Waves 1 & 2 of pre-orders over this weekend…that means that you should be looking for wave 3 of 500 more copies to hit the Quiltville Store on Monday morning!

And yes, there are more Simple Folded Corner Mini rulers also arriving – they will go into the store at the same time the 500 copies of String Frenzy do, so those on the West Coast – you are going to need to set your alarms EARLY! Look for these to post between 8am and 9am on Monday. Remember that I am in North Carolina, and have to live life from within my own time zone.

All of my EARLIER titles are also on sale in the Quiltville Store at just $19.99 a copy. Orders over $75.00 ship FREE within the USA using code FREE75 at purchase.

Thursday, November 29, 2018

I rediscovered this quilt top while pulling fabrics to help Mona assemble a back while she was here a couple of weeks ago.

Was it only a couple of weeks? It seems like last month at least!

I so enjoyed the three days that she was here – we quilted up SIX of her projects! Two large quilts and 4 small projects were then trimmed and made ready for binding so she could do that part at home.

And because I was SO in the mood to continue hearing the hum of the machine, I pulled this one out.

I always knew it would be great for the queen bed at the cabin SOME DAY – but with so many of my own quilts around, and fearing this one needed “Custom” quilting (that I didn’t have the time or desire to do with deadlines toward my own designs looming..) it had sat. And sat. And sat.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

All of those plans for hikes and vistas turned into “Let’s go to the movies and sit in the dark and eat copious amounts of popcorn followed by sodas bigger than our heads and send our sodium levels soaring to new heights!”

I don’t know about you – but anything below 40-something is just NOT something I enjoy getting out into. Best tolerated from the inside with some hand quilting in my lap and a fire in the stove.

Monday, November 26, 2018

This post comes with a warning – it’s going to be a long one as we’ve got a lot going on today. Grab a cup of your favorite and pull up a seat!

First things first – I have put another 500 PRE-ORDER copies of String Frenzy in the Quiltville Store. Books are on the truck – they should be delivered this week and I will get in to filling orders in the orders that they were received as quickly as possible.

Orders from today's 500 will be filled and posted as wave TWO – and it is likely 10 days to 2 weeks before that order filling will happen.

Please remember you are placing a PRE-ORDER! Orders are filled in the order that they came in and it could be that there are several hundred orders in front of yours being filled by yours truly.(With some help from some friends and family!) I will do everything I can to get orders out as quickly as possible.

Sunday, November 25, 2018

I feel like we are doing this String Frenzy Trunk Show thing a little bit inside-out, but it was too much to post along with Friday’s mystery post – and Thanksgiving was in the mix, and let’s face it – the books are still on a truck and haven’t arrived here yet!

So once again I am flying by the seat of my britches and shoveling this in on Sunday, so we can do our first Mystery Monday Link-Up for our Good Fortune Mystery tomorrow!

I’ve loved writing this book. I’ve loved even more – making the quilts for this book, and I know this isn’t the end of my own love affair with string quilts. String quilts are just the most fun I have ever had in my quilting life, and there is no stopping this string piecing train.

To get the detail photos for this post, I had to go back to my google photo albums, back to September of 2017 when I was getting the quilts ready to send off to photography for my Quilter's Date Keeper. This book writing thing takes a LONG TIME!

And so my friend - this is what you are going to find within the pages of String Frenzy.

Friday, November 23, 2018

Click HERE for Printer-Friendly Version.Happy November 23rd, everyone!I hope that those of you who are stateside in the USA had a wonderful Thanksgiving! For those who don’t celebrate our American Thanksgiving, I hope you can still feel a sense of gratitude and holiday festivity coming your way from those of us who do celebrate.We all have so much to be grateful for, no matter what time of year it is and we don’t need a designated day to focus on that gratitude.I am so very excited and very grateful to have the opportunity to once again share a terrifically fun mystery quilt with you and I want to thank you for making my holidays what they are. My heart is full and I just can’t wait to get this ball rolling!If you are just joining us, we’ve already released our introductory post including the colors of this year’s mystery and the yardage requirements. You’ll find that post under the Good Fortune tab at the top of my blog. Catch up there. It’s not too late to join in!

Thursday, November 22, 2018

I took my dad on a little jaunt to Jefferson/West Jefferson North Carolina yesterday afternoon – there were a few odds and ends to pick up, and then we met with the rest of the family who were inbound from Winston Salem – deciding to have dinner at our favorite Mexican Place in Jefferson.

Only upon arrival we saw that they were CLOSED. No worries – in the same plaza is The Winner’s Circle – and you can find just about everything you could ever wish for on their menu with portions so large you could feed a family of 4 on one platter. No lie. Half of it came home!

But before we ate – there was some time to kill. We hit up an antique mall I love to frequent to just to see what holiday decorations may be out (not many) and with Dad in tow, I told him to just look around for anything that interested him. “It’s like a museum where you can touch stuff!” I announced as he headed over toward a display of vintage cameras, from old brownies to polaroids, and we talked about the technology of this long out of date artifacts, the earlier versions of what is now found on our cell phones and live in our back pockets on a daily basis. Can you imagine?

Some of them even had manuals still in their boxes – so much fun to look through.

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

It was really too cold for any “real” hiking – and Grayson Highlands State Park was full of hunters for a controlled hunt so not a good time for us to be on trails, anyway.

But we did what we set out to do – what was on our agenda to do, and what I was so happy to do! I showed my dad around the area and I think he gets it why Southwestern Virginia has just captured my heart and won’t let go.

“This is sure a world away from where you grew up!” he said, memories of growing up in the busy and bustling bay area of California. Life in San Jose in the 60s, 70s, and 80s definitely WAS a world away. I never would have thought life would send me here, either!

To my young self – a life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia was just not even on the radar. Yet here I am.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

It was one of those crazy pre-holiday shopping days that out of necessity had to happen yesterday -

Yes, the Monday before a major “meal” holiday – Thanksgiving.

I knew it would be a zoo – but I had company all weekend, and there was no room in the fridge at home to buy all of this a week or more ahead and then have to transfer it up here to the mountains.

I wanted items, especially produce to be somewhat fresh – and I’d be picking my Dad up at the airport anyway, so how simple it would be to just make a couple of early afternoon stops before swinging by the airport to pick him up?

A master of time management and organization, I thought I had this nailed! And then…..

Monday, November 19, 2018

We’ve been working this machine quite a bit lately – with quilting up this year’s winter mystery Good Fortune, and the basket quilt I’ve just finished binding on (to be shown at a later date) and the Hunter’s String Star (previewed in last Friday’s Gift-Away post – did you see it? Did you enter to win??) Along with Mona’s 6 projects and then my loading of THIS old 2004 UFO -

I think we’ve done in my computer system. I got all the way to the last border and the machine started going herky-jerky. No longer were my feathers nice and round, but they looked like a 3 year old drew them on an etch-a-sketch. AUUGHH!

Son Jeff and The Hubster came down to see about adjusting cables further (Though he still can’t see anything due to Thursday’s Lasik and the protective lenses that are still in place on his eyeballs.) and things ran BEAUTIFULLY for the rest of that one row…but when I advanced the quilt to the last row, the fill in at the edge of the border – Herky Jerky All Over Again.

I unplugged myself from the cables and finished up the edge of the quilt free-hand, going old school. Boy, it has been a LONG TIME since I have done that, and moving that machine head is a skill that can be lost over time.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

The far side of the basement where the fabric lives – and where stuff in between trips is unceremoniously dumped to be taken care of when there is time for it.

This is the "late night" photo where I was too tired to care that there is still a pile of fabric to be dealt with front and center.

And there were PILES, much more than what you see on top of the cutting table covering my Accuquilt Studio.

There is fabric to put away, yardage for the cabinets, fat quarters for the bins you see on the wire shelving unit at the far side of the room – and copious amounts of scraps destined for “holding bins” until I can find the time to slice them down and enter them into my own Scrap User’s System.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

This has me so blown away, and I want to thank those who have sent photos from Houston while I was in Indiana! It’s one thing to take the time to make a big quilt, but the painstaking business of redrafting that big quilt down to mini and piecing it? WOW! Inna, I love your quilt – it is perfect in every way!

Monday, November 12, 2018

While yesterday, November 11th, 2018 was the traditional day for Veterans Day, Veterans Day is observed as a state and federal holiday in 2018 TODAY Monday, Nov. 12th this year.

A federal holiday means that local, county, state and federal offices and agencies are closed. Which includes the Post Office – but not Quiltville!

Yesterday was a busy travel day for me, on the way to the Indianapolis airport by 7am, making my connection in Atlanta and home by early afternoon. It didn’t give me much chance to write a veteran’s memorial post the way I wanted to, so like the federal agencies mentioned above, I’m observing TODAY and keeping these folks in my thoughts.

While not a typical veteran herself, my grandmother was raising small children while her husband, my grandfather was in the US Navy.

This picture was taken in 1943 when grandpa was serving as a Naval Officer in the South Pacific. She occasionally earned money working as a photographer’s model.

You know, we went back in time to check out just WHEN these dates were planned – the letter I received (hand written invitation at that time!) was dated 2013. We really DID wait 5 years for this date to arrive.

And that sometimes happens when a guild only meets the second Thursday of the month, and there are only so many second Thursdays to go around within any given year. FIVE YEARS! And yet it flew by so very quickly.